The communication of data over networks has become an important, if not essential, way for many organizations and individuals to communicate. The Internet is a global network connecting millions of computers using a client-server architecture in which any computer connected to the Internet can potentially receive data from and send data to any other computer connected to the Internet. The Internet provides a variety of methods in which to communicate data, one of the most ubiquitous of which is the World Wide Web. Other methods for communicating data over the Internet include e-mail, usenet newsgroups, telnet and FTP.
Users typically access the Internet either through a computer connected to an Internet Service Provider (“ISP”) or computer connected to a local area network (“LAN”) provided by an organization, which is in turn, connected to the ISP. The ISP provides a point of presence to interface with the Internet backbone. Routers and switches in the backbone direct data traffic between the various ISPs.
To access a LAN and, in turn, the Internet, many prior art access control systems require a user to connect his or her computer to a wired network (e.g., through an Ethernet port) and enter a user name and password. If the user name and password match a user name and password in an authentication database, the user will be provided access to the network. These systems typically assume that a user is tied to a particular physical port, such as a port in the user's office. Based on this assumption, provisioning of bandwidth to the user occurs by physically provisioning the port to which the user is connected. If the user moves to a different port, the user will typically be provided with the bandwidth provisioned to the new port. Thus, provisioning of bandwidth is done on a per port rather than a per user basis.
General internet access provided via broadband technology (e.g., Digital Subscriber Line, DOCSIS or analog cable modem, or similar technologies) may be capable of provisioning bandwidth to a computer premise equipment (CPE) device. CPE provisioning can be dynamic and remotely administered. However, broadband technology adoption is not a single-user and, hence, is not user-specific provisioning.
An increasing number of organizations (e.g., businesses, governmental organizations) wish to provide access to LANs and the Internet to various classes of users (internal users, contractors, customers, visitors). For example, many cafés have public wireless networks to allow patrons to access the Internet, receive email and perform other network activities. While users may be asked to authenticate to use the network, bandwidth is provisioned to the wireless routers, not the individual users. This means that one user connected to a particular router can consume a majority of the bandwidth (e.g., downloading pictures from the Internet), slowing down the wireless network for other users connected to that router.
An additional problem with many current networks, particularly wireless networks, is roaming between subnets. A subnet is a portion of a LAN that has a common address component. One subnet, for example, can cover a particular floor of a building, while another subnet covers another floor. Each subnet can potentially have its own set of internet protocol (“IP”) addresses that may or may not overlap with the IP addresses of other subnets. When a user moves from one subnet to another, even if both subnets are part of the same LAN, the user must typically reauthenticate with the network. This can make physically roaming between subnets frustrating because open network sessions will often be dropped.